Downtown businesses oppose LRT route

Hamilton Spectator

Business owners in downtown Hamilton want the city to take another crack at its plan for routing a proposed light-rail transit line.

The boards of the both the Downtown Hamilton Business Improvement Area (BIA) and the International Village BIA are opposed to a proposal to run an east-west B-line from Eastgate Square to McMaster along King Street. The BIA boards originally recommended running the lines along Main Street but now say they would support splitting the east-west routes between Main and King streets.

Business owners fear that impacts on parking and car and truck travel will keep customers away and make it difficult to get deliveries. As well, a proposal to make a narrow stretch of King west of Wellington a pedestrian-and-transit-only section is drawing fire. “When you talk about closing down the street from Wellington, that’s the entrance to the business area and that scares the hell out of us,” said Gord Thompson, whose downtown jewellery and pawn shop is a King Street fixture.

A city report contends that King is best suited to the economic revival mass transit can bring and that Main Street will be better able to handle vehicle traffic, potentially becoming two-way.